The Hubris of Dragons
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Against all possibilities, Indil finds himself thrown back in time and facing a dragon he had once stared down on a hobbit's finger. Side fic of "The Wasteland"


**Author's Note: Two notes, first this is a side fic to "The Wasteland" and if you haven't read that you'll be dreadfully confused. Second, this is NOT CANON.**

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Indil, covered in sweat, ash, and grease in a way no decent maia should ever find himself, feeling exhausted and still more than a little confused, confessed to the now empty cavern, "Well, that could have gone better."

Many things, in truth, could have gone better.

It'd been a dumpster fire from the start, after all, even back at the beginning when Lily had picked up a ring from the side of the road. No, perhaps long before then, when Sauron had thought that splicing his very soul could be an action without consequence. Or perhaps it had all started to go downhill when proud, ambitious, Mairon had left Valinor for the strange half-formed soil of Middle Earth and straight into the clutches of Morgoth.

Really, if you thought about it, half of his existence was a series of unfortunate events and Lily's wasn't that much better either.

Still, though Indil half believed in fate (Lily being rather dubious of any prescribed meaning to any universe and the ring believing in it with all the conviction of a kool-aid guzzling cultist) he could not help but wonder what path from A to B had led him to this surreal time and place.

Covered in sweat, and ash, leaning upon the borrowed sword of Gryffindor, and sitting upon a dragon's corpse.

A dragon who, in fact, had been dead for five decades.

But, apparently in Indil's new and improved Middle Earth experience, that was semantics.

"Although I suppose it's not really his problem," Indil admitted to himself, "I'm the one who somehow managed to trip backwards through time."

Which, sure, in Lily's world such abominable practices were apparently possible (and regulated by the government's research department no less) but that kind of bullshit didn't happen in Middle Earth. Not simply was it not done, but the song would not allow it, it was a continuous stream of everchanging music that did not allow for a reprisal of anything but a theme here and there.

The world was not built in such a way to support time travel.

But here he was anyways, against all expectations, falling through time and space and landing on a pile of gold next to the dragon Smaug who looked about as thrilled to see Indil as Indil was to see him.

His eyes had been like searchlights, those strange glowing things that had terrified Bilbo so, and it was in that same gravelly voice that he'd stated, "You are a fool of a thief, elf."

Smaug, the chiefest and greatest of calamities, Bilbo had once called him. If only, perhaps, Bilbo hadn't known what he was wearing on his finger all those years ago.

"Perhaps that is because I am not a thief," Indil said, the words falling out of his mouth as he righted himself, "Merely a wanderer whose walking holidays always seem to go through the black gates."

Smaug's jaw then had stretched into a grin, saliva dripping out from under his fangs and pooling upon his gold as an acidic green puddle. A distant thrill of mortal terror ran through Indil in a way that it never had before.

He was invincible, both by nature of the ring and of Lily, death could never hold him and the only death that awaited him was in the fires of Mount Doom or else upon Sauron's finger. And yet, there was something intrinsic to this fair form he wore, something deep in its heart that looked upon the dragon and cowered in terror.

"How did you get in here, thief?"

"I do not owe you that answer," Indil said, and his fingers twitched, itching to summon forth the blade of Godric Gryffindor from the abyss.

Except this was a dragon who should be dead, who would be dead by the black arrow of Lake Town, and Bilbo had a dragon to face at the end of his quest still. The song was not made to go backwards, never to loop upon itself so blatantly, and if it could then surely it wouldn't allow Indil's unthinking intervention.

If Bilbo had to face a dragon then the dragon would still have to be there for him and the ring to face. And yet, if there was anything in this world that was irrefutably, unquestionably, evil then it was the great wyrms of Middle Earth.

Smaug, of course, being one of the last.

The dragon did not wait for an answer, instead with that hubris that would one day destroy him, he lunged forward with teeth sharp as sabers eager to cut into Indil's flesh.

Indil tore himself through time and space backwards, outside of the beast's reach and summoned the silver sword into his grasp.

"You think you can escape death with your petty tricks, thief?" Smaug asked, cruel jaw curling upwards into a beast's grin.

"I think I have escaped greater deaths than any by your teeth," Indil spat back, grip tightening on the blade and shifting his position in the molten gold of the coins beneath his feet.

"My teeth are but one part of my arsenal," the dragon said with a laugh, the same arrogant laugh he had used when Bilbo had said much the same, had probed for weaknesses in the beast, "You forget my claws, the hurricane of my wings, the thunderous earthquake that is my tail, and the death of my very breath."

"I forget nothing," Indil replied, the steel of Lily now in the tone of his voice as he raised the sword upward to strike, damning all the consequences. Lake Town, certainly, would forgive him were they able, for being spared dragon's breath.

Bilbo, put upon yet adventurous soul that he was, would certainly bewilderingly thank Indil for removing the dragon before that fateful Durin's Day when Bilbo wandered into his cavern with nothing but a deceitful ring and his own wit for protection.

"Oh?" the beast asked, "Do you mean to slay me? Your kind is not usually so foolish."

"You are mistaken," Indil said, pouring life and soul into the very steel of the blade, watching as it brightened and shone beneath his power, "I have no kind in this world or any other."

And, he thought as he moved forward through the hellfire and the acid, the dragon should have known that the greatest and most terrible powers in any world were not the ones that could be listed off by name.

And so here Indil was, misplaced in time and space, sitting upon the corpse of a dragon and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. Well, at least the fellowship wasn't a problem anymore, even if Sauron was all too likely some unhappy wraith hanging about Mirkwood like a foul shadow.

Sitting there upon piles of treasure he neither required nor wanted, on the body of a dragon who would rot here in his self-made tomb, all he could think was, "I should leave a note for Bilbo."

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 **Author's Note: Written for the 400th review of "The Wasteland" by LivingInTheClouds who asked for a fic where Indil and Smaug meet (despite all impossibilities).**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are greatly appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, The Hobbit, or The Lord of the Rings.**


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